Mehul Bhattacharya: In the first of two matches played on Sunday, Royal Challengers Bangalore pulled off an impressive victory at Chepauk, in the 14th edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL 2021) winning by 38 runs, and in the process, ensuring that they maintained their winning streak this year. They performed equally well with the bat and the ball, walking away with maximum points from the fixture as a result.
On what seemed to be yet another challenging pitch at Chepauk, Royal Challengers Bangalore got off to a rather shaky start, with Virat Kohli losing his wicket to a brilliant catch by Tripathi, followed swiftly by Rajat Patidar in the very same over. After that, however, it was a completely different story, with Maxwell playing a brilliant innings to steady the ship, capturing the Orange Cap from opposition player Nitish Rana in the process. Devdutt Padikkal kept him company for quite a while but could never really get going. Maxwell’s innings was complimented by a rapid-fire 76 off 34 by A.B. de Villiers, who helped RCB get to a mammoth total of 204 for the loss of 4. For the Knight Riders, Varun Chakravarthy took two wickets, while Pat Cummins and Prasidh Krishna picked up a wicket each.
The second innings saw Kolkata Knight Riders get off to a fiery start in the powerplay, despite losing Shubman Gill to a sharp catch by Dan Christian. It all looked to be going according to plan for them, but they suffered a huge blow off the last delivery of the powerplay. Rahul Tripathi departed, having lofted it straight to Siraj off Washington Sundar, leaving his team at 57 for the loss of 2 wickets. The in-form Nitish Rana followed in the very next over, playing it straight into the hands of Padikkal off the back of a standard delivery from Chahal. KKR were staring into the eyes of defeat when Morgan departed, but then, out walked Russell. He seemed to be taking the RCB line-up to the cleaners, but in yet another turn of events, Jamieson struck twice in the third-last over. The last two overs saw some brilliant bowling from Siraj and Harshal Patel, with the latter even managing to scalp Russell’s wicket, thus ensuring a victory for RCB.